In Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, Milkman
Dead becomes a man by learning to respect and to listen to women. In the first
part of the novel, he emulates his father, by being deaf to women's wisdom and
women's needs, and casually disrespecting the women he should most respect. He
chooses to stray from his father's example and leaves town to obtain his
inheritance and to become a self-defined man. From Circe, a witch figure, he is
inspired to be reciprocal, and through his struggle for equality with men and
then with women, he begins to find his inheritance, which is knowing what it is
to fly, not gold. At the end, he acts with kindness and reciprocity with
Pilate, learning from her wisdom and accepting his responsibilities to women at
last. By accepting his true inheritance from women, he becomes a man, who loves
and respects women, who knows he can fly but also knows his responsibilties.
In the first part of the novel, Milkman is his
father's son, a child taught to ignore the wisdom of women. Even when he is 31,
he still needs "both his father and his aunt to get him off" the
scrapes he gets into. Milkman considers himself Macon, Jr., calling himself by
that name, and believing that he cannot act independently (120). The first
lesson his father teaches him is that ownership is everything, and that women's
knowledge (specifically, Pilate's knowledge) is not useful "in this
world" (55). He is blind to the Pilate's wisdom. When Pilate tell Reba's
lover that women's love is to be respected, he learns nothing (94).
In the same episode, he begins his incestuous
affair with Hagar, leaving her 14 years later when his desire for her wanes.
Milkman's experience with Hagar is analogous to his experience with his mother,
and serves to "[stretch] his carefree boyhood out for thrifty-one
years" (98). Hagar calls him into a room, unbuttons her blouse and smiles
(92), just as his mother did (13). Milkman's desire for his mother's milk
disappears before she stops milking him, and when Freddie discovers the situation
and notes the inappropriateness, she is left without this comfort. Similarly,
Milkman ends the affair with Hagar when he loses the desire for her and
recognizes that this affair with his cousin is not socially approved, leaving
Hagar coldly and consciously, with money and a letter of gratitude. He is as
deaf to the needs of women and as imperiously self-righteous as his father, who
abandons his wife when he believes she loves her father too much.
Macon teaches his son well the art of
"pissing" on women. As Pilate attempts to awaken Macon to the
inappropriateness of taking a dead man's gold and to their father's ghostly
message, he urinates, enjoying the idea of "life, safety, and luxury"
resulting from the gold (170). In his unnatural act, taking a man's life, he
has become deaf to his past and to Pilate. Though Milkman urinates on his
sister by accident, his act has the same implications as his father's. By
inertia, he assumes his father's attitude toward women, placing them in the
periphery of his mind, though they are the center and the source of his life.
Pilate and Ruth saved him from his father's attempts at abortion, and his
female relatives have done all of the work of raising him. He spies on his
mother, he feels the same "lazy righteousness" as that which leads
him to disrespect Hagar's claim to her rights in their relationship (120). He
attempts to steal from Pilate, his aunt, in order to follow his father's
instructions and to obtain the inheritance he feels will make him a man. At the
end of part 1, his sister Magalene attempts to awaken his sensibilities to this
through her diatribe on the effects of his blindness to his sisters' autonomy
and their contributions to his well-being (215). He follows her advice, and
leaves, not only her room, but the town and the identity he has been molded
into by his father.
Milkman leaves to get the gold which he
believes is his inheritance, feeling that this will allow him freedom from his
family, which he equates with the freedom to at last become a man. He tells
Guitar, "I don't want to be my old man's office boy no more" (221-2).
His fruitless attempt to gain his inheritance as his father advises him, by
stealing from Pilate, inspires him to try his own way of finding his
inheritance, and therefore, his manhood. He quickly learns that to obtain this
inheritance, he must listen to women as he never has before.
Circe is the first woman who he listens to and
treats with reciprocity. At first glance, he is overcome by the idea that she
is a witch (241). Women who kept alive the knowledge of their ancestors were
considered witches in the patriarchal, Christian culture. Circe has been the
midwife in most of the townspeople's births, and is so ancient that she is
believed to be dead. She is knowledgeable, and he learns that must take her
seriously to find his inheritance. Circe tells Milkman, "You don't listen
to people" (247), and he begins to truly listen to her and treat her as an
equal. She informs him of the last known location of his grandfather's bones,
of his grandmother's name, and of where in Virginia the family originated
(243-5). Milkman has his first urge for reciprocity with her, and she tells him
that he has unwittingly already returned the favor with his company and his
news of Macon and Pilate (248).
Milkman must learn to treat other men as equals
before he can treat women as equals. For a boy brought up in an atmosphere of
blind bourgeois elitism, the road to equal relationships is difficult. He
attempts to repay a man for a ride and a coke, only to realize that this is
offensive to the man's dignity (255). He learns real kindness when he helps an
old man with a crate who gives him information (256). However, in Shalimar, the
home of his ancestors, he must relearn the significance of others' dignity. He
receives a cold reception because of his careless showiness, and must then pass
initiation rituals to be allowed equal status in the town. Through his gradual
lessons in reciprocal relationships with men, he is prepared for equality with
women. With Sweet, he gives as well as receives loving gestures, learning at
last that others, no matter sex or status, deserve his sacrifices (285).
The initiations include a hunt that leaves
Milkman alone to ponder his life. Challenged to join the men in a hunt in which
he has nothing but himself on which he can rely, he begins taking his identity
and his relationships seriously. He realizes that humans are responsible for
each other, that his family's dependence on him is natural At last he discovers that Hagar's homicidal
urge is justifiable: "if a stranger could try to kill him, surely Hagar,
who knew him and whom he'd thrown away like a wad of chewing gum after the
flavor was gone ‹ she had a right to kill him too" (276-7). Milkman learns
what it means to be human when he is left with only that: "out here ...
all a man had was what he was born with, or has learned to use" (277).
Finding his own identity, he realizes the right others have to demand
responsibility from him.
At last, he can receive the knowledge of his
ancestors through discussions with a woman who at first seems shallow and
lacking in knowledge, and through the songs of children. Susan Byrd appears to
be full of empty gossip (292), but by listening to her and then to the
children's game, he learns that she does have a story to share (302). He
returns to her and learns the real story (320-4). He learns men can fly, and begins to
understand the responsibilties that come with this knoweledge. This is the inheritance
that makes him a man.
How do this makes him a man? At last, he can
return to Pilate some of the history she has bequeathed him. He can give her
peace by adding to her history of herself. Her beloved granddaughter has been
sacrificed to him, and this is the only way he can make amends. Pilate does not
only release him because she is overcome by this new understanding of her past,
but because he has learned to be a man. He accepts the box of Hagar's hair, a
reminder that "you can't fly off and leave a body" as he abandoned Hagar
(334). With this act, he ritualistically
accepts his inheritiance of responsibilty for others, specifically the women in
his life. As Pilate dies, he sings for her, an act of kindness, signifying a
new paradigm in his relationships with women.
She tells him,"I wish I'd a knowed more people. I would of loved
'em all" (336), reinforcing the significance of kindness and
responsibility. He realizes that she can fly, but that she also embraces
responsibility for others: "Without ever leaving the ground, she could fly"
(336). He learns from her the meaning of true freedom, which includes
responsiblity.
Macon Dead, a partriach, leaves his son an
inheritance of imperious indifference to women's knowledge and needs. Milkman
realizes that he is not yet a man, and tries, first through his father's and
then through his own way, to find the missing inheritance that will set him
free. To get the inheritance, he must listen to women, which necessitates
relationships of reciprocity with men and with women. His inheritance, knowledge
of his ancestors, helps him to create a relationship of reciporical kindness
with the matriach of his family, who gives him another inheritance, the burden
of responsibility to others. In Toni Morrison's novel, Song of Solomon, Milkman
becomes a man by choosing to respect and learn from women.
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